On the latest episode of American Horror Story NYC it’s been reveled that BOTH Hannah and Mr. Whitely work at the now demolished Saint Vincent’s Hospital in NYC. Despite being a Catholic hospital it would become the front line battlefield during the AIDS epidemic. This is an important part of our history and St. Vincent’s Hospital should never be forgotten.
Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers or just, “St. Vinny’s” as the locals called it was located on 12th and 13th Street and 7th/Greenwich Avenue in NYC. At one time St. Vincent’s was the 3rd oldest hospital in New York City after The New York Hospital and Bellevue Hospital. It was founded as a medical facility in 1849; and named for St. Vincent de Paul. The hospital was started by the Sisters of Charity by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, who went to New York City to set up a charity hospital in the city to meet the demands of the poor and disadvantaged.
St. Vincent’s served the poor as one of the few charity hospitals in New York City and admitted patients regardless of religion or ability to pay. For more than 150 years St. Vincent’s was a beacon in Greenwich Village, serving poets, writers, artists, and the poor and the working-class. It treated victims of the cholera epidemic of 1849, to the Hudson River landing of US Airways Flight 1549.
St. Vincent’s Hospital never strayed from its core mission to provide care with respect, compassion and dignity for the poor and displaced members of society and in 1981 when a mysterious disease began affecting gay men in New York City St Vincent’s stood strong to their mission. While many other hospitals turned patients away St. Vincent’s took them in and treated and diagnosed some of the first known cases of what would eventually become known as AIDS.
St. Vincent’s was the epicenter of New York City’s AIDS epidemic. It housed the first and largest AIDS ward on the east coast and was “ground zero” for one of the worst events to happen in gay history.
Dr. Dennis Greenbaum, Chairman of Medicine at St. Vincent’s, had been with the hospital for 42 years. He saw the horror that HIV/AIDS wrought in the early days. “We didn’t know how to protect ourselves. The ICU would be filled with crying families,” Greenbaum says. “There were funerals every week. I used to live on 13th Street. I had four next-door neighbors who lived in a huge loft and all of them died. I used to go to a lot of funerals. Then we lost our own doctors. We lost the chiefs of our HIV program”
During the height of the epidemic the flood of patients was so extreme, every available bed was taken and patients spilled out into the hallways, then throughout the surrounding corridors, where masking tape marked off virtual rooms.
Sal Licata, a city AIDS specialist, spent his last days at H-01 (H for “Hallway”), waiting in vain for a room to die in. A few feet down the hall was pneumonia-weakened Aldyn McKean, his old friend, a hero of ACT UP. If you knew one patient at the hospital, you likely knew others.
Thousands of people, mostly gay men died or were treated at St. Vincent’s for HIV/AIDS; and many more passed through to visit sick partners, friends and family members. Although there were other important AIDS wards and treatment centers in New York City, none treated patients with the caring, and human compassion that St. Vincent’s did.
St. Vincent’s Hospital went bankrupt in April 2010 and closed it doors forever. For anyone familiar with that time news of St. Vincent’s demise was hard to accept. St. Vincent’s was a standing memorial to HIV victims and the memories of friends and family.
The former hospital campus after a long battle are now luxury condominium. But that bland building along Seventh Avenue will always hold a place in the geography of the plague called AIDS. It’s our ground zero, a museum of memories, a place haunted. We see the ghosts as we pass there even now, we hear their voices, and their last words. Memories of those who vanished from those rooms and our lives forever. And no matter how they changed the buildings they will always stand as a memorial to courage, compassion and dignity of those who were once within its walls/
Thank you for this article. It is a tribute, not only to St. Vincent’s, but to all who have died of HIV/AIDS and to the many medical professionals, volunteers, family members, lovers and friends who cared for them. It truly was a frightening time but also one of building community, of fighting for our rights and for heroism. I lived in Connecticut on the outer edge of the epidemic and worked with some very dedicated people at the CT Department of Health and the Hartford Gay Health Collective. It now seems like a different lifetime but AIDS has had a profound effect on all of us who have survived. May we never forget. An afterthought: I read comments on different blogs that often vilify anything “Catholic”. While reading this article I was reminded of my Catholic upbringing and how the mission of St. Vincent’s epitomized what it meant to be Catholic for me. Sadly, this no longer seems the case.
My personal memories of St. Vincent’s are very oppositional. My ER & clinic memories are exceptional, but my lover’s treatment & death in 1983 was surrounded with the staff’s fear and loathing on that particular ward. The separate elevator entrance at the back also made it clear; and segregated even visitors from the rest of the hospital population. It became better, but it was fairly loathsome in the 80s, imho.
I compare it to Mother Theresa’s Sisters of Charity hospices tossing PWAS out when their insurance ran out!
Not to be one of those prickly people who are always correcting, but the campus for St. Vincents was at SEVENTH Ave and 13th Street (running toward Sixth Ave.)The Building shown is the old Mariner’s training building and headquarters, which was across the Avenue from the main building. It was bought by St. Vincent’s in the 70s but as far as I know used for offices. The sisters who owned St. Vincents were approached by some flimflam Wall Street money man who promised to rework their assets (an endowment and the buildings) and promptly skinned them alive with their money evaporated and the building mortgaged sky high. Very sad.
No, it’s actually on 12th Street and 7th Avenue, running towards 6th Ave. I use to work there for 15 years. The clinic was across the street, between 12th & 13th street. Just saying.
I taught culinary arts on 14th in between 6th and 7th. Whenever a student cut or burned themselves, I’d rush them there. The frightful images I have of my fallen gay brother’s seeking help there are burned in my brain. I hope they are all in a sweet place, not remembering their pain.